


Universal Reboot

by perdiccas



Category: FlashForward
Genre: Gen, Post-Canon, Yuletide 2010
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-12-11
Updated: 2010-12-11
Packaged: 2017-10-13 15:34:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,319
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/138870
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/perdiccas/pseuds/perdiccas
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The second time the world blacks out, Demetri sees a future worth fighting for.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Universal Reboot

**Author's Note:**

  * For [curiouslyfic](https://archiveofourown.org/users/curiouslyfic/gifts).



> **See end notes for an additional warning that is also a spoiler.**
> 
> Many, many thanks to enigel and aurilly for beta reading.

The bomb has forty seconds on the clock.

Mark drops his gun and runs.

-

 _Demetri knows he should be listening because the officiant is grilling him on all the big ones, on loving and honouring and cherishing, for as long as they both may live, but he’s captivated by Zoey’s smile. She can’t stop grinning. Demetri wonders if she’s as close to cracking up as he is. It’s not that there’s something funny or even something to make fun of; it’s simply that he’s never felt as purely happy as he does right now. All that joy inside him has to bubble out somehow. Zoey’s lips twitch; Demetri does his best to school his face into a very serious expression. That only makes her smile wider. He hopes she doesn’t start to laugh because if she does, he’ll won’t stop; his mom would never forgive them._

 _The officiant pauses. Demetri feels all eyes on him. He doesn’t need to have listened to the questions to know his answer. Right now, it feels like he’s always known. He says sincerely, “I do.”_

 _“Do you have the rings?”_

 _Demetri turns to Janis. She’s grinning nearly as wide as he is, and her eyes are shiny wet when she rolls them at him, like she can already tell how badly he’s going to rib her later for tearing up. He drops a kiss to her cheek as he takes the gold bands from her. “Thanks,” he whispers._

 _“No problem,” she whispers back. “Now get to it, you’re holding up the show.”_

 _He fits a ring on Zoey’s finger and Zoey slides a ring on his, and from the front row there’s a sudden burst of gurgling laughter. Simon flashes them a cheeky smile, bouncing the baby on his knee. The baby makes grabby hands in Janis’s direction, still giggling to himself but quieter now that Simon’s soothed him. Demetri knows he can’t be saying Da-Da because he’s too young for that, but when the baby reaches for him instead, that’s what Demetri hears._

 _Then it’s time to kiss the bride, and all that love and joy and rightness in Demetri’s chest comes hiccupping out after all; he dips Zoey backwards as he kisses her, trapping their laughter between their lips._

-

“Sweet dreams?” Simon asks. He has to raise his voice to be heard above the sound of straining metal. His fingers fly across the keyboard; codes and number strings Demetri couldn’t begin to understand scroll like rapid-fire down the screen.

Demetri nods dumbly, sinking back into his chair. He spins himself around once, and then again, shock fading into that same giddy feeling he felt in his flashforward. This time, he doesn’t try to hold the laughter in. “In about a year, you’re gonna be sitting in the front row at my wedding.”

“Huh.” Simon’s fingers still; the numbers keep cascading. He looks at Demetri skeptically. “Are you sure about that? We don’t even like each other.”

Demetri laughs again, snagging his beer from earlier. “I don’t know, man. Don’t ask me how, but that’s what I saw.”

He watches electricity flare along the length of the accelerator, bright red flashes behind the observation glass. The grinding sound is getting louder. He tilts the neck of his beer bottle in the direction of the noise. “Is it supposed to sound like that?”

Simon glances distractedly at his watch and then back to computer screen. “It’s about seven and half minutes from exploding. So, yes.”

Demetri turns to him, incredulous. “But you can stop it before it does, right?”

There’s a moment of silence that stretches on too long; that’s all the confirmation Demetri needs. He’s on his feet, his beer abandoned and his gun aimed at Simon’s head. Simon huffs an exasperated sigh, looking up just barely long enough to glare at him. “We don’t have time for this, Agent Noh.”

“Really? Because seven and a half minutes sounds like plenty of time to me,” Demetri grits out. “Step away from the computer.”

“Or what?” Simon laughs to himself. “You’ll shoot me? You’ll just be trapped in here with my corpse when everything goes boom.”

Demetri makes a low, frustrated noise. He pulls the trigger, swinging his gun as he does. Simon flinches, ducking closer to the mainframe. The bullet sings past his ear. It ricochets off the door, boring impotently into the ceiling: bulletproof glass.

“Are you done?” Simon spits derisively. Demetri says nothing, swiping the back of his hand across his face, smearing away the sweat there. His breath is coming quicker. He feels desperate with the need to act. He looks at Simon and catalogues his options. He spies the access card on the desk. Simon’s eyes follow his line of sight. They both grab for it at once.

“Dammit, don’t you see?” Simon yells when Demetri wrestles the card from him. “As long as this machine is functioning, there’s nothing we can do stop another blackout! We were right here and there was nothing I could do but sit and watch as they used my work for their own ends.”

Demetri is at the door now. He holds the card against the reader. His shoulders tense when the light stays red, the door sealed shut. He swipes the card again. “So we’ll come back,” he shouts at Simon. The screeching noise is at its loudest, high pitched and unrelenting. “In the morning, we’ll come back and shut it down. We’ll shut everything down.” The door still won’t open. “What the hell is wrong with this thing?!”

“Safety protocols,” Simon says. “To keep anyone from getting too close when there’s a core meltdown. I don’t have the manual override.”

Demetri slams his hand against the glass; nothing happens. With the butt of his gun, he lashes out again.

“I designed this room myself,” Simon cuts in. “That glass isn’t going to break.”

“Simon...” Demetri warns.

“You don’t understand, Demetri. There is no coming back in the morning. This thing goes so much higher than Hellinger; if I don’t stop it now there’s no guarantee I’ll live long enough to get another chance.”

“So, so what? You couldn’t stop the blackout from happening but you can meltdown their machine? You couldn’t have done that in the first place and saved millions of lives?”

“It doesn’t work like that,” Simon growls. “There was _nothing_ I could do to stop the blackout. But I could piggyback on their pulse to dial it up. You saw yourself a year from now, right?”

“Yeah,” Demetri confirms, brow creased in confusion. “The baby. Janis’s baby looked about six months old.”

“The accelerator isn’t designed to handle that kind of load on a global scale. The pulse would have been erratic, unstable. You saw a year in the future but someone else could have seen ten years from now and someone else just five minutes ahead. That kind of energy load...” He trails off, waving his hands in the air to mimic an explosion.

He pounds on a final key at the computer and then suddenly, he stands, kicking his chair away. Instinctively, Demetri levels his gun at him. Simon rolls his eyes. “Come on.”

“What are you doing?” Demetri yells as Simon shoulders a panel on the wall until it pops.

He pulls the metal aside, revealing a hidden access chute. “We’ve got a wedding to attend, remember?”

Demetri holsters his gun and scrambles down after him.

They race through a cramped tunnel. Their feet pound on the concrete. The air is getting thicker, hotter and harder to inhale. They careen around a corner; Demetri skids to a stop. He’s ten feet from where the accelerator glows white hot, spins and shakes.

Simon keeps moving towards it, looking back at him over his shoulder.

“Are you crazy?” Demetri screams.

“Trust me!” he yells in reply. Simon points at a door about two hundred feet in front of them. “Maintenance door. It’ll let us out along the highway.”

Demetri takes a deep breath, ducks his head, and follows.

The force of the explosion propels them forward. The land roughly, tumbling across the gravel. Demetri pants in hysterical laughter; his body aches but he’s still alive. He can already hear the sound of sirens wailing, but when he looks up, three fire engines streak past without stopping. He pushes himself to his feet, watching as they race toward another, bigger fire.

“Is that...?” Simon asks dazedly.

“Yeah.” Demetri swallows dryly; the FBI building burns. He shakes himself. “C’mon,” he says decisively. “There’s nothing we can do there. We need to make sure Janis is okay.”

-

Zoey comes to in her car, safely at the side of the road. She opens her eyes to an inferno on the horizon.

“No,” she mutters to herself, firing up the engine, shoving the car into gear. “No, Dem, don’t you dare change the future on me now.”

She floors it all the way to the FBI. When she can’t get any closer, Zoey leaves the car behind, sprinting towards the fire. She hears people shouting, “Stay back, ma’am! Keep back, it isn’t safe!” But she doesn’t stop; EMTs pull a limp body from the fountain.

Suddenly, there’s an arm around her waist. Someone pulls her back, grip tight. She screams, clawing at the arm, kicking backwards. She’s only held tighter. “It isn’t him!” Wedeck shouts from behind her, loud enough to be heard above the chaos. “It’s okay, Zoey. It isn’t him. Demetri wasn’t in the building when it blew.”

“It isn’t him,” Vreede’s voice confirms this time. He holds her up when she sags back against his chest.

Zoey inhales deeply, sputtering at the smoke. She pulls herself upright, turning to face Wedeck as Vreede lets her go.

“Where is he?” she demands.

Wedeck shakes his head. “He hasn’t checked in since the GBO. But the networks are overloaded; even on a secure line it could be hours before he can get a call through.”

She looks back at the fire, at the body loaded on a stretcher. “Who...?” she asks, swallowing tightly when her voice cracks.

“Mark Benford.”

“Come on,” Vreede says gently. “You can ride with me to the hospital.”

Zoey clutches her phone tighter. In her outbox a message waits, delivery failed: _Dem, I love you. We can make this work._

-

Even with the advance warning, the Pacific State Hospital Emergency Room is still in chaos. Simon pulls his collar higher and tugs the brim of his fedora lower. Demetri elbows his way to the admissions desk, flashing his badge as he goes.

“FBI. I’m looking for another Agent,” he tells the nurse on the duty. “Janis Hawk. About this tall,” he gestures to show Janis’s height. “Brown hair. Pregnant. Came in just before the blackout complaining of stomach cramps? She was worried about the baby.”

The nurse nods, tapping at her computer. She frowns, “That’s weird...”

“What?” Demetri demands. “What is it? What’s wrong?”

“I was here when she came in. Dr. Long was expecting her, but I can’t find her record on the system.” The nurse squints at the screen, clicking around. She turns to a stack of paper files beside her, flicks through them but comes up empty handed. “It’s like she never checked in.”

“Let me look,” Simon says suddenly.

The nurse shakes her head. “I’m sorry, sir, but this is privileged information. I can’t allow you to...”

“This is a matter of national security,” Demetri interrupts.

“Do you have a warrant?”

“Oh for god’s sake,” Simon spits. He vaults over the desk, elbowing the nurse aside. He shakes her off when she tries to pull him away. His hat gets knocked from his head. The nurse gasps, recognising Simon from the news reports of the only man known to be awake during the first GBO.

“Security!” she yells.

“FBI,” Demetri says as he draws his gun, too, holding back the guards before they get too close. “You’d better know what you’re doing,” he hisses to Simon.

“The whole system has been wiped.” Simon sounds vaguely awed. “I’m trying to recover the data but someone worked very hard to make it look like Janis was never here.”

“I need to speak to Dr. Long,” Demetri tells one of the guards. “Now.”

The guard nods and scurries off. Simon makes a triumphant noise. Demetri looks at him from the corner of his eye. “Any luck?”

“Not exactly. I can’t recover Janis’s file but it looks like someone left a message for us to find instead.”

“What?” Demetri ducks around the desk too, keeping his eyes on the guards, peering at the screen over Simon’s shoulder.

“It’s encrypted. It probably would have taken that FBI lab of yours weeks to find,” he adds smugly. “But it’s there and it’s deliberate.”

“What does it say?”

“Patience,” Simon says with infuriating calm. “All in good time.”

“There!” Demetri points at the screen as a sequence of numbers emerge out the jumbled data. “What is that?”

“If I’m not mistaken—and I hardly ever am—someone wants to play a game of follow the leader. Those are coordinates.”

Demetri squeezes Simon’s shoulder. “Good work,” he says, punching in the coordinates into his phone, to look them up.

“Agent Noh?”

Demetri looks up quickly. “Dr. Long?”

She nods. “I saw Janis just before the blackout. She’s fine. She didn’t need to be admitted.”

“And the baby? What was wrong?”

The doctor hesitates. “I know you’re worried about your colleague, Agent Noh, but I can’t give you any more details without compromising doctor-patient confidentiality...”

“I’m the father,” he blurts out before he thinks. “The baby’s mine.”

Simon looks up in surprise. Bemused he says, “Mazel tov.”

“The baby is fine.” Dr. Long pats his arm comfortingly. “You son is fine, Agent Noh. But Janis could stand to take a few days off and get some rest. I’m sorry, I can’t tell you more than that without referring to her file...”

“ _Dem!_ ”

Demetri spins towards the sound of his name, opening his arms for Zoey to rush in to them. “Zoey, what...?” he starts but trails off at the sight of the stretcher coming through the doors, flanked by Vreede and Wedeck. The sheet is pulled up high, covering the face. A doctor rushes over but the EMT waves them off. Demetri hears the words, “D.O.A.”

He holds Zoey tighter. “You’re meant to be in Hawaii,” he says desperately, burying the words in her hair.

“I couldn’t go, Dem,” she says. “Not after everything. I couldn’t get on the plane.”

“I’m sorry,” he says. “I’m so sorry,” over and over.

“I know,” Zoey says. “I know. It’s okay. Me too.” She takes a breath, looks over her shoulder at the stretcher, now being rolled into another room. Wedeck and Vreede stand a grim, respectful distance away. “Dem...” she starts; her voice breaks.

“It’s Mark,” Wedeck finishes. “I’m sorry, Demetri.”

The shock hits Demetri like a punch to his ribs; he inhales short and sharp, letting out the air out again in one long breath. He squeezes Zoey one last time and steps back. He stands up straighter. “Janis was kidnapped.”

“What?” Wedeck says. “By who?”

“Hellinger,” Simon interjects. “Or at least someone on his payroll. According to these timestamps, her file was deleted one minute and fourteen seconds after everyone else fell asleep.”

Wedeck stares at him incredulously. “You’re supposed to be under arrest.”

Simon shrugs. He stands up from behind the computer, setting his fedora back on his head. He pats his jacket pockets, searching for the USB drive he’d taken from NLAP. He tosses it to Wedeck. “Trust me when I say you’ll be glad I got away.”

Wedeck closes his hand around the stick drive. He raises a questioning eyebrow at Demetri. Demetri sets his jaw and nods. Wedeck connects the drive to his phone, downloading the data.

Demetri turns to Zoey. He swallows thickly. “Zoey, honey, I love you but you can’t be here right now.”

Wedeck glances up. He says, “Agent Vreede will take you somewhere safe.”

Zoey lets herself be led away.

-

Wedeck’s hand is heavy on Demetri’s shoulder. He steers him forward firmly, even when Demetri’s feet feel like lead. He needs to be looking for Janis. He needs to be looking for the men who set the bombs. Demetri needs to be anywhere but this clinical white room where Mark was wheeled away.

Simon hangs back, quiet for once. He holds his hat in his hands.

“You need to do this, Demetri,” Wedeck says, kindly, but still an order. “It’s for the best.”

Demetri’s mouth is stretched into a hard, thin line. His eyes sting but there isn’t time for that so he swallows down the lump that’s rising in his throat. He reaches out and tugs the sheet back from Mark’s face.

Mark blinks up at him.

Demetri recoils in shock. Mark sits, groaning. He’s covered in cuts and contusions, dust and grit and grime. The EMTs have wrapped a bandage around his upper arm and already the white gauze is stained a purpling red.

“You son of a bitch,” Demetri hisses. He punches Mark hard on his good arm, letting Mark catch him when he doubles forward; his chest feels hollowed out. Mark winces when Demetri hugs him but he doesn’t pull away, just hugs back tighter.

“What the hell, Mark?” Demetri says when it feels like he can breathe again. “What the hell was that?”

From the corner, Simon laughs, loud and obnoxious. He has his fedora on his head again, tilted at a rakish angle. Blindly, Demetri rounds on him but Wedeck intervenes; he puts both his hands on Demetri’s shoulders, grounding him with the pressure. “Okay?” he asks.

“Okay,” Demetri agrees gruffly.

“Sure?”

“I’m sure.” Demetri shrugs him off.

“Dem.” Mark reaches for him; Demetri pulls away, pacing up and down the tiny room. Wedeck’s phone rings and he turns away to answer it.

Mark says, “I’m sorry, okay? But you know what Hellinger said. In every flashforward, he saw the same thing: I was dead. If we want to get the upper hand, he needs to think he’s right. This is what I saw, Dem. In my flashforward I was deep undercover: new name, new identity. For all intents and purposes, Mark Benford died in that explosion.”

“Screw Hellinger!” Demetri spits. “Screw your flashforward! And screw you, Mark! Things can change. Of all people, I thought you knew that.”

Wedeck snaps his phone shut. He clears his throat. “That was central dispatch. Hellinger escaped.”

“What is it Lloyd likes to say?” Simon muses from the corner. “Once we’ve glimpsed it, the future wants to happen.”

-

Janis wakes to the low drone of a car radio.

“New evidence has surfaced allegedly linking President Segovia to Jericho, a US funded paramilitary organisation currently under investigation by the FBI in relation to the Global Blackouts. The White House has yet to confirm or deny rumours that Segovia’s whereabouts have been unaccounted for since the allegations first came to light, less than an hour before the Second GBO...”

Her body feels too heavy. Her mind is clouded. Her heart races as she becomes more aware, adrenaline flushing the lingering drugs from her system. Her fingers twitch where her hands rest on her knees.

“It’s just a mild sedative.”

Janis startles.

Lita smiles at her from the driver’s seat. “Nothing harmful to the baby, I promise.”

Instinctively, Janis curls an arm around her midsection. She brushes her fingers against her holster but her gun is gone. Lita’s eyes stay on the road; her smile never wavers.

“What do you want?” Janis’s voice sounds harsh. Her throat is dry when she swallows.

“To negotiate a deal.”

Janis laughs roughly, tipping her head back against the headrest. “I don’t work for you anymore.”

“No,” Lita says agreeably. “But I think it might be time I came to work for you.”

Janis sits up straighter, more alert. Her arm tightens around her middle.

“What?” She shakes her head incredulously. “After everything... Why?”

“Let’s just call it insurance,” Lita demurs.

“What possible reason could I have to trust you?”

“Come now,” she says, her lips quirking at Janis’s frown. “We both know the future is ours to change.”

-

 _The back of the van is sweltering. The air tastes stale; Janis’s flak jacket is tight enough around her belly to make it hard to breathe. Six hours of surveillance and all they’ve got so far is static._

 _“Are you_ sure _this intel’s good?” Demetri asks for what feels like the millionth time. He’s never been good at waiting, Janis knows that, but her temper is getting is shorter these days; there’s a trail of sweat slicking down her spine. He taps his foot obnoxiously. She glances up, about to snap, but the corner of his mouth twitches up into a smirk._

 _“You’re such a jerk,” she says fondly, kicking him in the ankle._

 _“Aw, Janis,” he teases. “You can’t tell me you're not gonna miss all this excitement when you’re stuck on desk duty for the next four months.”_

 _Janis grins at him, one eye still on the unchanging monitor display. When she leans back in her seat, she can feel the baby moving too. “Somehow, I’ll find a way to struggle on.”_

 _“You always were a trooper.” Underneath the amusement in his voice, Janis thinks she hears something that sounds like pride._

 _Vogel clears his throat. He has the case file open on his lap, a stack of crime scene photos precariously close to tumbling out. “Have you picked out a name yet?” He asks Janis but sends a fleeting look Demetri’s way, unsure still how they fit together._

 _For a moment, Janis finds herself holding her breath but Demetri keeps on smiling, waiting expectantly for her to answer. Her breath comes out in giddy rush; Janis feels suddenly, absurdly grateful that he understands. “Alphonse,” she says._

 _“That’s, uh,” Vogel falters._

 _“Awful,” Demetri supplies with a laugh._

 _“Hey!” Janis swats at him but she’s not as quick as she used to be, something Demetri gleefully exploits to his full advantage. He ducks out of her reach._

 _“Alphonse sounds like something the long lost, third Mario brother would be called...” He starts to hum the Super Mario Brothers music but cuts off abruptly when Vogel cuffs him behind the ear. Janis smothers her laugh at Demetri’s wounded pout._

 _Vogel says firmly, “Alphonse is a lovely name.”_

 _She smiles, bittersweet now. “He’ll go by Al.”_

 _They sit in contemplative silence. Janis allows herself a moment to feel the dull ache in her chest._

 _“It’s a good choice,” Demetri says finally. “You’re gonna be a great mom, Janis.”_

 _“Yeah?” she asks._

 _“Definitely,” he says, sounding surer than Janis has ever heard him sound before._

 _There’s a sudden flicker of movement in the corner of the monitor. Janis’s attention snaps to the screen; she shoves her headphones back in place. She listens intently, tapping in the key-sequence to zoom in and enhance. When the pixilation cleans up, Segovia and Hellinger have their heads bowed together, deep in conversation. “We have a clear visual. You’re good to go,” she says to Vogel. To Demetri she adds smugly, “I told you the intel was good.”_

 _He grins back at her, flexing his arms, stretching out his cramped muscles as much he can in the space they have. He double checks his gun and cocks it. “I never doubted you for a second,” he insists._

 _“On my mark,” Vogel orders into a walkie-talkie. He gestures at Demetri, holding up three fingers; he drops them one by one in a silent countdown._

 _Demetri flashes Janis one more grin before they storm warehouse. Through the comm she hears him yelling, “Mr. President, you’re under arrest,” just like he’s been practicing all week while they set up the sting._

 _In the chaos, the case file has spilt across the floor. Janis shuffles the photos into a haphazard pile, closing the manila file on a shot of Lita’s corpse._

-

“The company might seem be a little odd but he’s harmless, I promise.” Vreede slips a keycard into the motel door, motioning Zoey inside. “This is the safest safe house we have.”

She follows the murmur of the TV, an infomercial extolling the virtues of the ShamWow. A scruffy-looking man is curled up on the coach asleep. He has an FBI jacket draped over his shoulders. When Zoey reaches over him for the remote, his eyes snap open. Zoey startles back.

“I’m sorry,” she starts, intending to apologise for waking him, but he interrupts.

“I knew you’d come!” He sounds delighted. He sits up quickly, drawing his knees to his chest, resting his chin on his knees. “You say...” he pauses, looking at Zoey expectantly.

“Um... I’m sorry?” Zoey tries, bewildered.

“Yes! Yes, you say ‘I’m sorry’ and I say ‘That’s okay.’” He touches each of his fingers, like he’s counting off a mental list. He says, “That’s okay,” again and giggles.

“You say ‘I’m sorry’ and I say ‘That’s okay’ and Agent...” He trails off when Vreede enters the room with two cups of coffee. He hands a cup to Zoey and keeps the other for himself, and the man on the couch squirms on the cushions in barely repressed, childlike excitement.

“That’s enough, Gabriel,” Vreede recites tiredly. “Ms Andata has had a long day.”

Gabriel claps his hands. Vreede smiles indulgently, shrugging apologetically in Zoey’s direction.

“Yes, exactly,” Gabriel insists. “You say ‘I’m sorry,’ I say, ‘That’s okay’ and Agent Vreede says ‘That’s enough.’ It wasn’t like this before,” he continues in a rush. “Before... Before, it wasn’t like this. I saw lots of things before but before was never like this. It’s like this now, though. It’s good now.”

“Good,” Zoey agrees.

Gabriel grins at her. “Everything is going to be good now.”

**Author's Note:**

> Warning: At one point, Mark is declared dead on arrival after jumping from the FBI building seconds before it explodes/the world blacks out. It's just a fake out; he's fine!


End file.
